Liana turned her face back to the body, her eyes going wide. It looked like a human in so many ways, but it was not. Her mind raced with excuses from an experiment gone wrong, a person from the future, to what everyone had been calling bigfoot, but her mind settled on alien. She had just killed an alien, and there was no doubt in her mind that it was dead. Radioactive-looking green blood oozed from the bullet wounds and pooled underneath it. Shot at such close range, one bullet left a gaping hole in its neck. The other, left a cavity high on its chest. It was dead.

Her eyes looked past the body to stare at the beautiful orange and yellow coloring the sky had taken. It was getting dark, and time was against her. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end at just the thought of being in the dark with such a body, the remains of an alien, but she wanted to do something. She was a conservationist, meant to try and protect the diversity of life, and she had destroyed it instead. She hadn't given the creature a chance. The respectful thing to do would be to bury the body.

She didn't have a shovel though, and it would soon be dark. She had already shot one animal, and she did not want a bear come to investigate and have to shoot it too. Critters would likely eat away at it, flies would start to lay maggots, but she had no other choice. Liana hurried from the forest, leaving the body and her sanity far behind her. She climbed up in the Jeep, started the engine, and sat there taking deep breaths. She promised herself that she could come back straight away in the morning, and began heading home.

Jumping at shadows and freezing at every little sound, she made sure the Jeep, the shed, and everything else was securely locked. In the house, she checked the windows and shut the blinds. More than just bears and coyotes were out there in the dark. Her muscles were tense and her body felt tightly coiled like a spring. She needed to relax, so instead of cleaning her gun or messing with household chores, she drew herself a bath. Liana stripped her clothes off, carelessly leaving the belt with the gun in the bedroom and her clothes in a pile on the bathroom floor. She immersed herself in the hot water, feeling her stress being washed away.

Her fingers massaged the shampoo into her hair, she shaved, then she sat there with her eyes closed for what felt like hours. Her fingers and toes were impossibly wrinkled by the time she drained the tub and washed off. She towel dried her hair as much as possible, and then crawled into bed naked. She lay there for several minutes, her eyes open, and her fingers tensely holding the edge of the sheet. She didn't think she would even be able to fall asleep after what had happened, but eventually she slipped into dreams.

Liana jolted awake with the alarm clocks annoying beeping. Having slept, but not feeling rested, she hurried to put on clothes and didn't even bother to comb her hair. She snatched the shovel she used to pick up roadkill with and tossed it in the back of the Jeep. She knew the park pretty well, and stopped the Jeep in the same place she had as last night. She easily hiked up slope back to the place she had left the body. She had almost been hoping that it wouldn't be there, that it all had been a dream, but there was green blood on the forest floor. Avoiding looking at it, she poked the ground with the end of the shovel, looking for the softest place to dig.

Knowing she would have to dig a pretty big hole, she leaned on the shovel, and reluctantly looked over at the body. She stared at it, unbelieving of what she was seeing. Her body tensed suddenly though, noticing that the shoulders of the body were slumped up against the trunk of the tree, the puddle of blood beside it. The body had been moved.

She walked in front of it, crouching, staring at the blank metal mask that hid its face. It didn't appear to be breathing, as its chest didn't move. It had a hole in its neck and its chest. It had lost so much blood, there was just now way it was alive...Yet, she decided to check anyway. She pressed her fingers to the man's wrist, finding no pulse, which immensely relieved her. And just to be sure, she tilted its head away and pressed two fingers to its neck. She waited, feeling nothing at first, and then almost a weak pulse.

Thinking her mind had been playing tricks on her, she waited until she felt it again. Her thoughts raced. It was alive. She ran back to the Jeep, flinging open the door to grab her medical kit. It was unbelievable. Liana raced back to the body, and quickly dug into the box. She had everything she could ever need, but finding it was the problem. After picking out the correct tool, she slipped on her gloves, and hovered over the body-Her biology degree did not qualify her for this.

The first bullet had gone through its neck and out, so she removed the second bullet from its chest. She cleaned and disinfected both of the wounds, and then wrapped them up. Then, out of pure curiosity, her hands went to metal that covered its face. Her fingers felt around the edges, pulling slightly until she heard a wisp of air escape the tubes on the side, and the mask released. More of its luminous green blood dripped down to its chest and she slowly moved the mask to the side so she could see its features.

"Christ!" she rocked back on her heels at the sight of its grotesque face.

She quickly had to turn away from it, the reality of the situation somehow sharpened by seeing its uncovered head. It was definitely alien. Its size, she could ignore. Its odd diseased-looking skin, she could overlook. The mask and armor, she could dismiss. But its face...its face terrified her. Liana cleaned the soft gel inside of its mask, squinted as she cleaned the blood off his ugly face, and then put the metal back in place and reconnected the tubes. With that sound of released air she had heard when taking it off, Liana had to assume that the mask was a necessary breathing apparatus.

She dug out her cell phone then, and stared down at it in her hand. She just kept thinking that she should call someone-the sheriff, or something. People should know what was out there, but she couldn't do it. If the police came, if people saw, they might get spooked and start shooting bears as she had first mistaken the alien as. And if a government agency came, they might erase all record of the alien and she would live out the rest of her life feeling crazy, knowing exactly what she had seen, yet no one would believe her. She was a common ranger. The government would not let her study the alien, and that is just really what she wanted to do.

Curiosity got the best of her. She shoved her cell phone back in her pocket, her decision clear. Liana would get to study the alien, document it, and write an essay about it even if no one would read it. Then, when her curiosities were sated, she would turn the alien in to the government. She had an oversized cage trap for bears she planned on using if one was injured, and so she could just lock him in there. And when it was time to call someone in, she would just say that one day she baited the trap and caught...an alien. It was a rough plan, but she would have time to smooth out the details later.

Right now, she needed to get him back to her house and into the cage. He was about eight foot tall, muscular, and had to weigh two hundred pounds easy. Liana on the other hand, was a lithe but tough curvy female that stood about five and a half foot tall. Moving him was not going to be easy. She abandoned him in the woods again to get back in her Jeep and back to her house. She loaded the two-by-fours in the back and then headed into the woods again, parking as close to him as she could.

Liana lined the pieces of wood up onto the tailgate of her Jeep, hooked her arms under his, and then began to drag his body over. The alien was limp in her hands, wounded, and incredibly heavy. She pulled and shoved, struggled, before finally tying rope to his legs and rope to the Jeep like a pulley system. She yanked on the rope even as it cut into her hands and slowly slid him up onto the tailgate. Her chest heaving, she dropped the rope and went around to shove his legs out of the way to close the tailgate, but paused.

In her head, she kept referencing the alien as a 'he' but after seeing its face she couldn't say it was a definite male or female. Her closest guess at this point would be that it was a hermaphrodite. Liana hopped up onto the tailgate, and began to undo the strap that held its metal plated goin cup in place. She set the armor down beside it, and plucked at the end of its soft loincloth to lift it and see for herself what it was. Liana sexed bears frequently. It was a very routine thing. Yet, her cheeks blushed a deep red when her eyes settled on its anatomy. It was definitely, without a doubt, a 'he'. The alien had perfectly normal, healthy male parts exactly matching any human male, only bigger.

Liana let the cloth fall back into place, covering him back up, but she was tempted to look at it again. It had looked too normal, circumcised even, and she just doubted that aliens would bother with such a thing. However, she knew she would get other opportunities to examine him, and hopped out of the back and slammed the tailgate closed. She collected her stuff, tried to cover up the oddly green blood that was drying on the ground, then drove him back to her place.

The live trap would serve as a cage, as it was huge, specifically made with gigantic grizzlies in mind. It was a simple design, made out of a single metal tube secured to a trailer. At both ends was a square gate with bars that could be lifted but locked into place when they dropped. He would not be able to stand all the way up in it, but he would never escape. Liana backed the Jeep all the way up to one end of the cage, and she got out to raise the door and open the back of the vehicle.

She began to shove him into the cage, but as she looked down at him, she paused again. Her hands went to the straps to his other armor pieces, taking them off. She didn't want him banging around in the cage with metal, and it would make it easier to shoot him with a tranquilizer without all of the armor blocking her shots. If he was anything like a bear, when he recovered and woke up, he would be scared and angry. She worried that she might have to tranquilize him incase he got to rough and hurt himself before he was fully healed. Liana didn't want him left with any weapons either, so she removed the other things on him too.

Though she couldn't identify all of the objects as weapons or otherwise, she removed all of the metal from his body except the two things on his wrists and his mask. The one wrist gauntlet she had fiddled with for several minutes to no avail. She considered putting a chainsaw to it, but knew that was reckless. It didn't look like a weapon anyway, with a sort of flat screen on the top. The other wrist gauntlet however, she had her suspicions about. Just when she was about to give up, a sort of lever on the back clicked and the whole thing loosened enough on his arm so she could slide it off. When she tried to do the same with the other wrist gauntlet it didn't work, so she left that one alone.

There was still a black mesh around his torso and legs though, like thickly coated wires. She couldn't imagine what it was for, but it was underneath the rest of his clothes, the leather straps and jewelry, so she decided to leave it on him or else she would have to completely undress him. After all the work she had already done, it seemed like a daunting task. Liana shoved at his body, trying to be as gentle as possible, but pretty much just ended up dumping his body into the cage. She checked his bandages quickly, and then slammed the door down, hearing it latch.

She stood and stared into the cage, so many questions racing around in her head. She knew she should wait until he was fully healed to go poking around, so her mind wandered back to the fact that his blood was vibrantly green. Human blood was red because it was technically rusting in our veins and helped carry oxygen, which also gave human blood its iron taste. If his blood worked in the same way, copper turned green as it oxidized, and high contents of it in his blood could have something to do with the color then. Still, she knew better.

His blood was not only green, but a glowing green. As well, there were some animals on earth with green blood already, and it was not due to copper in their blood. And hemocyanin in some mollusks and arthropods contained copper, but the way it reacted in their body turned the blood in their oxygenated arteries blue, and in their veins it was clear and colorless-and in no way green. She was at a loss as to why his blood looked so radioactive, and only wished she had a sample to look at under a microscope.

Liana didn't have a sample of it though, and he had already lost way too much blood already. It was a miracle he was still alive. She went and fetched her notebook, and would have to content herself to documenting his physical features for now. However, as she brought the pencil to the paper, that odd sort of calm came over her, like when she watched bears. Instead of jotting down his characteristics, she was compelled to draw him.